


Waking up

by hellostarlight20



Series: Together [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon?, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Epsiode Fix-it: s02e13 Doomsday, F/M, Romance, We don't need canon!, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7680460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellostarlight20/pseuds/hellostarlight20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jackie called Rose to tell her about the ghosts popping up on the streets, none of them ever thought their day would end up like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking up

**Author's Note:**

> @zoebelle9 asked for Ten X Rose and D: Waking up please and thank you? (She’s so polite, isn’t she!)
> 
> This is the final story in my Together series and is a Doomsday fix-it. Because I can. Even if I missed @chocolatequeennk’s July's Doomsday Month.

“Please wake up, Doctor,” she whispered. “Please.”

Rose pressed her lips to his temple and held the Doctor close, terrified to release him. She brushed her fingers through his hair, strangely flat as he lay unresponsive in her arms. They lay on the spare bed in her mum’s flat, curtains drawn, lights dim. Him on the flat of his back, her curled into his side.

As she had this morning, after they made love. This morning seemed a lifetime ago.

She pressed a kiss to his cheek, his nose, the corner of his mouth, and willed her body to stop shaking. It didn’t listen, but then her will was a little shaky as well. Today had not gone as planned—today took the plan, whatever thin plan the Doctor had, and shook it right out of the universe. Right into the Void.

Outside, the world settled into the controlled chaos it was used to.

Rose envied them. Inside the tiny flat on the council estate she grew up on, Rose held her heart’s life as if he might leave her at any minute. And she wasn’t so certain that wasn’t the case.

She didn’t know what they did to him, didn’t know if they gave him something that might kill him or inhibit memory or motor function. Rose had no idea what they’d done, after she and they Doctor stopped their experiments and closed the gap between universes.

After they trapped the Cybermen in the Void.

Rose wondered if Mickey and Pete knew about that, if they were even the same Cybermen from that other universe. Wondered if they tried jumping into this universe to stop the Cybermen. Hoped they hadn’t got caught between worlds, but they were safe in that one.

_Oh, Mickey. Be happy. Please._

Closing her eyes, she listened to the Doctor’s hearts beating. They sounded just fine, in sync and steady. She pressed her lips to his forehead, kept her hands on him. He was a touch telepath, he had to feel something from her, yeah? One hand firmly held his; the fingers of her other traced the curve of his jaw, the slope of his neck, the angle of his collar bone.

Part of her wanted to strip him and press his naked body to hers, just to reassure herself he still lived. Not in her mum’s flat, not with Jackie in the kitchen making tea. The TARDIS hummed quietly in the corner where the Doctor landed her earlier today.

Today? Rose sighed and let her gritty eyes close tiredly. Yes, that was all today.

One minute she and the Doctor lay in bed (their bed now) after making love and the next her mum called with stories of ghosts popping up on the streets. One minute it was just another adventure, the next it was a secret government organization kidnapping the Doctor and threatening to kill him.

Which, okay, wasn’t _entirely_ unusual. But to strap him down and threaten torture for supposed crimes against the crown 120 years ago?

“Here.” Jackie held out a mug of steaming tea, strong and black.

Rose scrambled up the bed and carefully lifted the Doctor’s weight against her. She tilted his head back and opened his mouth.

The mug wasn’t too full, and Rose was careful not to scald him with the tea. Even unconscious, he swallowed a couple tiny sips. As if he knew she needed him to do so. She set the mug on the bedside table and closed her eyes again, letting her head fall against the wall with a dull thud.

She was too tired to even wince at the impact.

“You need sleep, sweetheart,” Jackie said quietly. “You’ll do him no good if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“I know, Mum.” Rose didn’t open her eyes, but tightened her fingers around the Doctor’s. “I can’t get the image of him out of my head, though.”

Rose shuddered and squeezed her eyes tightly closed as if that might help erase what Torchwood did to him. How they tortured the Doctor. It did not. She doubted anything would.

“You said he’s all right,” Jackie insisted. “He is, yeah?”

Rose swallowed and slowly opened her eyes. She was too tired to lie, to do much of anything. “He’s alive. I don’t know what they did to him, what sorts o’ drugs they gave him. This was all after we sorted the Cybermen and those energy conductors they used to open the Void backed up and threatened to explode. The Doctor promised to fix it, but Yvonne Hartmann had him taken.”

She shuddered and swallowed hard to clear her throat of the fear and pain. The sheer terror at not finding him after she helped evacuate the upper floors. Well, she and—Rose shook her head. “By the time I found him, he was strapped to a table plugged into all these _machines_.”

To find out how this alien worked. Because if it’s alien it’s Torchwood’s. Rose swallowed hard and willed the nausea down. How could anyone think a living being was property?

Jackie shuddered and Rose was inordinately pleased she hadn’t been with them when they found Torchwood. Who knew what those crazy people might do to her mum just to get answers from the Doctor?

“Bastards,” Jackie muttered.

Snorting, Rose agreed. “Yeah. But they’re mostly dead now. Yvonne is, at least.”

Yvonne hadn’t listened about the energy backlash. Yvonne had been far too interested in dissecting and exploiting the Doctor.

“They ought to be exposed,” Jackie insisted. “That journalist friend of yours, she ought to do a write up on them.”

Stunned, Rose stared at her mum. “You’re a genius,” she muttered. Her gaze drifted to the door and she watched the empty opening blindly for a moment. “I’ll call Sarah Jane—after.” She frowned and hugged the Doctor tighter. Closer. “After the Doctor wakes up.”

“It’s like the other Christmas, though, yeah?” Jackie took the mug of tea and looked at it as if it contained answers to all the many questions they both had. She set it back on the table. “When he was in that, what’d you call it? Healing coma?”

Rose nodded and pressed her lips to the top of the Doctor’s head. He didn’t move, didn’t stir, simply breathed evenly and just—just slept.

“I’ll stay with him a bit,” Jackie insisted. “You shower and change. After, I’ll make tea and we’ll have some of the biscuits from that ship of his. The ones we had after Mickey—” Jackie stopped and blinked rapidly. “Those lovely chocolate ones.”

Rose hummed but didn’t move.

“Besides, I think you have another person you can get answers from.”

Her head shot up. “Jack’s still here?”

Jackie gave her a withering look. “Course he is, where’d you expect him to go?”

Rose had no idea. Everything with Torchwood and the ghosts and that stupid power supply Yvonne Hartman wanted and then what she’d tried to do to the Doctor—all of it made sense at the time, as they raced through the tower at Canary Wharf and tried to figure out the mystery. Now, now all it did was replay itself in her mind on a loop of about twenty seconds.

The Doctor hooked up on those machines. The Doctor unresponsive. The Doctor unconscious.

“Jack helped get the Doctor out of Torchwood,” she whispered.

“He seemed very worried,” Jackie added. “When you brought him in. He doesn’t say much, for all he talked. Reminds me of this one,” she said and nodded to the Doctor. “Both seen too much and hide it.”

Frowning at her mum for her unusual observation, Rose nodded and promised, “I’ll talk to him after I shower.” 

It took her another twenty minutes or so to pry herself from the Doctor’s side. He may have grunted when she finally moved, finally released his hand. Or that may have been her own wistful thinking.

A quick shower and change of clothes later, and Rose opened the TARDIS doors and exited.

She hadn’t returned to his—their?—room.  
She hadn’t laid on their bed and cried.  
She hadn’t begged the TARDIS for help in waking him.

And if she had, only Rose and the TARDIS knew.

Jackie sat by the Doctor’s bed, her own mug of tea at her side, and read that independent newspaper she took to reading after Mickey decided to stay in the other universe. The one Sarah Jane sometimes wrote for—no wonder she mentioned having Sarah Jane do an article. Jackie looked up at Rose and nodded, a strained smile curving her lips.

Feeling slightly refreshed, Rose leaned over and kissed the Doctor’s cheek. “Please wake up.” She caressed the spot she kissed, pushing all her love, all her hope, all her need for him into that touch. He didn’t stir.

Rose kissed her mum’s cheek and whispered, “Thank you.”

Damp hair curling around her cheeks, exhaustion tugging her limbs, worry berating heavily in her chest, Rose lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. She turned from the spare bedroom, once her room, and went to face an old friend.

She hovered in the archway of her mum’s living room and watched him. Jack Harkness sprawled out on the couch, hands folded over his button-down shirt, eyes closed and not looking a day older than the last time she’d seen him.

She watched him for a long minute, not sure where to begin. What to say. What even happened today. Yes, it made sense then. Now, in hindsight with her clawing, choking fear for the Doctor threatening to make her curl in a tiny ball and cry?

Nothing made sense.

“I won’t bite,” Jack said and cracked open an eye. “Unless you want me to.” He waggled his eyebrows in that Jack-way.

Rose snorted and entered the room. She let none of her anxiety show, none of her fear or tears or uncertainty. She swallowed them all down and met Jack Harkness’s steady gaze.

“How are you even here?” she asked and sat on a chair opposite him. “I don’t understand any of it.” Her voice hitched on the final word and she pressed her fingers into her thigh. Jack had to see, missed nothing that one, but the small tell was better than frustrated tears. “I thought you _died_!”

“Rosie,” Jack sighed and sat up. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and slipped his braces back on. “It’s a long story. A very long story.”

“Start at the beginning,” she commanded. Rose shook her head. “No. Start with how you were at Torchwood today.”

And if she sneered those final words, so be it.

Jack opened his mouth, closed it, repeated the motion and finally nodded. “Short version then. I didn’t die on the Game Station, heard the TARDIS leave and used my Vortex Manipulator to follow you guys, missed and landed in 1869.”

Eyes wide, mouth agape, Rose let out a squeak of disbelief. “Wha…?”

So much for not giving anything away.

Jack nodded ruefully. “Lived through the rest of the 19th century and all the 20th hoping to find you and the Doctor again.”

If possible, Rose’s mouth dropped open more. “And Torchwood?” she asked, voice thin and heart pounding.

“They found out about me.”

He didn’t say but he didn’t have to. Rose knew. If he lived 140 years waiting for them…even 51st century medicine wasn’t _that_ good.

“They found out about you—your longevity.” Rose stated, not bothering to ask. “And they threatened you.”

“It’s more than longevity, Rose.” Jack cleared his throat and knelt before her. He took her hand, and she stared at it as if Jack were a stranger, not one of her closest friends.

But no, it really was him. Really was Jack.

“I can’t die, Rosie.”

That noise, that squeaky little noise of disbelief came from her, she knew it did. But then Rose swallowed and nodded.

“I know.” She shook her head and it was all so clear, so obvious. “I mean, I know, Jack.”

Yes, that cleared things right up, didn’t it. Rose sighed and squeezed his hand before releasing it. She let him sit back on the couch while she ordered her thoughts and memories, or new memories or instinct or whatever it was.

Rose stared blindly at the archway between the living room and her old room, willing the Doctor to just _wake up_.

“I—I didn’t know before,” she said slowly, the hum of the TARDIS loud even in the living room. Or maybe it was in her head. “I don’t—I didn’t,” she corrected, “remember what happened. But the Doctor.”

Rose cut herself off, not sure what she remembered or what she wanted to say. She looked through the wall as if she could see into her old bedroom where the Doctor still slept. The words were there, but they refused to order themselves, refused to be spoken.

_As if the universe will explode if I remember._ Hadn’t she said that to Mickey once? About flying the TARDIS?

She shook her head again and zeroed in on Jack. She was tired, worried, and now she wanted answers. “Why were you at Torchwood?” she demanded.

“I run the Torchwood III base in Cardiff,” Jack admitted. “I usually try to fly under Torchwood London’s radar, but when the ghosts appeared, I needed answers.”

“And you just happened to be there at the same time and same day as us?” Rose asked in pure disbelief.

Jack only frowned. “I know it seems odd, but what are the chances I’m still alive? What are the chances I found you and the Doctor again? I searched for over a hundred years, and now, here, I found you.” He shook his head and suddenly looked tired. Old and tired and beaten down. “What are the chances for any of it?”

“Oh, I’d say about one-hundred million—” Rose jerked her head in the direction of the archway—“three hundred thousand seventy-five—” leapt from the chair—“two hundred and sixty—” he opened his arms for her—“to one.”

She rushed into the Doctor’s arms and hugged him tight, breathing in the scent of him, mixed with a little more tea than she expected. Rose pulled back, eyed the dark tea stain and smacked him square in the chest.

“Don’t you ever frighten me like that again!” she shouted.

Then pulled him down for a kiss. Just to prove to herself he really was alive and standing before her. His hands settled on her hips and pulled her tight, mouth opened to hers. 

“I never wanted to scare you, Rose. My Rose.” His lips curved against hers. “You’re alive.”

“So are you. I was afraid—” she stopped and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re awake, I was worried.” Rose leaned her forehead against his and took a moment. She swallowed her tears and took just a moment with her lover. “I was so worried.”

“My Rose,” he breathed and cupped her cheeks. “I’ll always find you. I’ll always protect you.”

The Doctor pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss, but Rose felt so much more from him. She felt his terror, the way it squeezed his hearts and scrambled his brain. She felt his relief that she was alive and with him. And she felt his love. The strong, pulsing, overpowering force of it.

“What happened?” she demanded and stepped back. “What did they do to you?”

“I’ll make more tea,” Jackie offered. She sounded tired and drained. “And maybe call for takeaway from the Indian place around the corner. Yeah?”

She moved into the kitchen before anyone could answer, phone in hand. Rose stared after her mum, a little nonplussed at Jackie’s nonchalant attitude. Then again, Jackie had been the one to call the Doctor when the ghosts appeared. Not Sarah Jane, not anyone from UNIT the Doctor insisted he still knew.

Jackie Tyler.

Rose shook her head at her frankly amazing mum and returned her attention to the Doctor. He looked at Jack warily but hadn’t moved from her embrace.

“What did they want with you?” she demanded again.

“Remember when we met Queen Victoria?” The Doctor tugged his ear but he still looked tired and drawn. “Apparently she didn’t like my attitude and created Torchwood to stop me.”

“I wiped those files,” Jack offered, looking at the Doctor with the same wariness.

Rose sighed and flopped back onto the chair. Her long day wasn’t over yet.

********  
Hours later, food eaten, forgotten and reheated and eaten again, pots and pots of tea, two bottles of wine, and one very long explanation from Jack, she and the Doctor curled in their bed on the TARDIS.

“Today wasn’t supposed to go like that,” he said.

His long, cool fingers traced the line of her spine beneath her vest top. Rose shifted her leg over his pajama-clad ones and folded her arms on his bare chest, chin resting there to better see him.

Really, all she wanted to do was sleep but her brain raced with stories and apologies, with guilt and anger. She and the Doctor fought, the Doctor and Jack fought, Jackie—never one to keep quiet—yelled at all of them for being so reckless with their lives.

She was exhausted and wired at once, and didn’t know what she wanted. But feeling the Doctor’s skin against hers helped soothe Rose and she pressed a kiss to the center of his chest.

“What do you mean? How was today supposed to go?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just—remember the storm?”

Rose shuddered and tried not to think about it. She still thought he was wrong, that he dwelled on it so much the Doctor somehow willed the storm into existence. No, she didn’t know how that was possible, but in this universe? Anything was.

“The instant we landed the TARDIS in Torchwood, I felt it.”

“Timelines?” Rose moved and brushed her fingers along his cheek. “What did you see?”

The Doctor talked about timelines enough that Rose learned his tells, such as they were, whenever he saw them. The slight twisting of his mouth, how his eyes darkened and deepened, almost as if they were twin black holes, not the light brown she knew and loved. He described it as like watching countless scenes play out in two mirrors facing each other.

An infinity of possibilities.

“I felt that storm. That’s why I wanted you to stay in the TARDIS. I didn’t want it to grab hold of you.” His eyes squeezed tightly closed and wrapped his arms around her. “I was afraid it’d take you away from me. But it didn’t and I don’t know why it didn’t.”

“I think we should just be glad it didn’t,” she whispered.

“Rose,” he said seriously. Then he wrinkled his nose. “I think your mum saved us.”

She giggled. “I’ll be sure to tell her that.”

“Please don’t,” he whined. Then, serious again, “I can’t lose you.”

Rose leaned up and kissed him tenderly. She had no words for that, couldn’t have spoken around the lump in her throat anyway.

“I’m here,” she whispered, “I’m here. I promised to stay with you, remember? Always.”

He choked out a laugh. “I believe the word was forever, Rose Tyler.”

Rose tried to smile and kissed him again, her own eyes wet with tears. “Forever, then.”

“Forever,” he agreed and Rose felt his body relax against hers. “I’ll wake up next to you forever, Rose Tyler.”

“I love you, Doctor.” She kissed him again and lay her head on his chest.

“And I, you, Rose.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this story clarifies everything!


End file.
